* In French, the words ‘organize’ and ‘organizer’ were unknown before the end of the eighteenth century or the beginning of the nineteenth century. With regard to the term “organize,” Balzac observed ‘This is a new-fangled Napoleonic term. This means you alone are the dictator and you deal with the individual as the builder deals with stones.’

-Ludwig von Mises

While you might be right about the superiority of the Articles of Confederation to the Constitution, it’s really irrelevant to my point, which is that while neither document created a perfectly free anarcho-capitalist society, they were, in the broader scope of history, experimental attempts to create a free country by creating a more limited government than had existed so far.
Of course there were ulterior motives and corruption on the part of people involved, and of course there’s a lot more to the story. But it would be absurd to say that, in terms of how civilization has been organized since it’s beginning, the US was not a step in the right direction.
The fact that they failed serves the same purpose that every failed experiment does: showing what doesn’t work, and hopefully, why it doesn’t.
The parasites in Washington have certainly taken full advantage of the classical liberals’ trust in limited government. But they also expose the untenability of such doctrines.

The page said it was awaiting approval. I’ve noticed that that message appears when one’s comment contains a bunch of links. I assume it’s a method by which to prevent spam.

Sincerely,
Alex Peak

Jesse said

“…was far superior to every other political system at the time…”

It wasn’t superior to the Articles of Confederation. Like nearly everyone, you unconciously give credit where it is not due. The main cause of America’s former and rapidly fading success was a culture of respect for private property. The Constitution in part was a tool of Monarchists to subvert that. It has been wildly successful for these D.C. parasites.

Best,
Alex Peak

But viewed in it’s historical context, the Constitution was no more of a “mistake” than Newtonian physics was “wrong.”

It was an important and vital step toward an as yet unattained ideal, was far superior to every other political system at the time, and cannot be faulted for failing to take into account everything we have come to understand since (and as a result of) its drafting.

The US was an invaluable experiment in limited government. It’s history is the most decisive empirical evidence in favor of the abolition of the State, as such.

As far as the Constitution…obviously the Constitution was an attempt to ordain a national government. So it’s bad. The limitation of powers and checks and balances are dysfunctional – all the enforcement power resides inside the government. The Constitution could hardly be considered near perfect – it isn’t even a legal document, filled with vague language. If anything, it was not much different from campaign rhetoric.

I agree with Rothbard that the Bill of Rights have been interpreted to grant government more power, rarely limiting it. And that the Supreme Court is a show trial designed to validate the government’s power grabs. If the Bill of Rights was so important, why didn’t they spend more time specifically detailing things the government cannot do? Because it was supposed to be a living document? Well, you got your wish. It’s alive, and it hates freedom.

Secession from Britain – if you followed Stephan’s links, you’d understand his libertarian logic. Secession in itself is surely libertarian. The way that specific secession was conducted, however, was not. It involved the normal state practices of taxation, inflation (accompanied with price controls and legal tender laws), and conscription. The rallying cry of the revolution was “No taxation without representation”. I’m sure a significant number of American chickenhawks were singing a different tune – “Great taxation WITH representation!!!”

Some of these posts seem to exemplify typical libertarian characteristics: such as the inability to distinguish positive law from libertarian principles, and so on. All the jabber by mainstreamers about whether this is a good decision or not, how it “affects” democracy, etc., are all irrelevant to the constitutional question: the Court was right, in my view, in their striking down the law, since it’s not authorized by the Constitution. But this does not mean the result is libertarian. It means it’s constitutional. Whether it’s good or bad from the libertarian point of view is another question altogether.

To me, the crucial point to make here is that a government of fewer laws is not a sufficient condition for greater freedom, even if the ideal is anarchocapitalism. As a thought experiment, imagine that there were only one law: that all people should obey a single man in all that they do. That single law grants absolute power and strips away all freedom. Now, say that there is only one law, but instead it prohibits violations of the laws of nature. Some may argue that, in principle, the society governed by the first law is no less free than the society governed by the second. However, the vast majority would say otherwise–the second law clearly imposes no restrictions at all. In other words, laws are not created equal in their impact on freedom. Further thought will necessarily lead to the conclusion that it is the collection of laws as a whole, and not any single law, which is relevant to improving freedom. It would not improve freedom to, for example, permit the buying and selling of laws and their enforcement, or to free the speech of corporations that enjoy the fruits of government interventions while restricting the speech of the citizens who are harmed by those interventions (If money is speech, we can’t ignore that the citizens are impoverished by the state).

Quite. “Extremeness” (Extremenicity, Extremiosity?) is in the eye of the beholder isn’t it? “Moderation”, that’s a good one too. Millions always giving themselves a little shot of self-satisfaction as they strive to get to the middle of the Titanic.

Anyone who doesn’t know this Ackerman here, an insight from his previous screeds: he wants everyone’s money confiscated and the Feds in his fantasy will equally apportion the funds to all the candidates for their campaigns. Extreme indeed.

mpolzkill, this is not so extreme if you believe in “benevolent dictatorship”!!!

Also, Greenwald mentioned in his blog this morning that he would comment on this decision in a subsequent post. It will be interesting to see whether his “progressive” half or his “civil libertarian” half comes out on top.

Anyone who doesn’t know this Ackerman here, an insight from his previous screeds: he wants everyone’s money confiscated and the Feds in his fantasy will equally apportion the funds to all the candidates for their campaigns. Extreme indeed.

Maybe you could explain how McCain-Feingold was doing anything except entrenching the encumbant power already making the government bigger.

The problem isn’t money buying power, it’s money buying government power. Money will always buy power, but government power is absolute. The only real solution is to take the power away from government. McCain-Feingold does exactly the opposite.

This decision takes power away from government, and that is a good thing.

I shall attempt the first.

Kinsella again takes an issue where most people have knee-jerk reactions and illustrates it from an enlightening and truly libertarian perspective.

The case at hand went to court because a conservative group produced a 90-minute video against the candidacy of Hillary Clinton. They were prohibited from airing it at their own expense.

Kinsella makes the simple, yet plainly correct observation here that the Federal Government is not granted the power to limit (‘regulate’ in newspeak) speech – from anyone. All those clamoring for such regulation are effectively advocatiing a a central State unlimited by the bounds of the covenant that created it.

The ‘Bill Of Rights’ is a problematic document since it has long been abused by federal courts as a means to exercise unconstitutional power over us. Our rights are natural and self-evident, and not created by some legislative fiat.

In that context deciding not to secede might have been a good idea.

We are assuming there will be state either way. One is close home an independent US, the other is far away the Queen.

From a pragmatist point of view, a far away authority might have less actual power to coerce its citizens.

But if we are going to be pragmatist we must think of the passage of time. Bill of rights and the constitution were almost perfect, but there were problems of enforcement and these problems grew bigger by time. Today after more than 200 years no one hardly, at least no politician, care about the constitution or the bill of rights.

But in the case of non seceding how long would the practical independence from a far away ruler last?

But one must also think about the fact that bill of rights still have some meaning thought it is not practicaly the law of the land anymore.

For people living in the US it may be hard to see this, but I would be grateful if my country had the first amendment. Maybe the first amendment isn’t followed to the letter over there today but none can dare speak against it openly and ordinary people know and cherish that right.

Many places in the world don’t even have that kind of ancient relic that they can turn to. As Ron Paul said I think, liberty is a new thing in humanity as opposed to tyranny and it is a very big and unique luxury to have liberty in your past.

In that context deciding not to secede might have been a good idea.

We are assuming there will be state either way. One is close home an independent US, the other is far away the Queen.

From a pragmatist point of view, a far away authority might have less actual power to coerce its citizens.

But if we are going to be pragmatist we must think of the passage of time. Bill of rights and the constitution were almost perfect, but there were problems of enforcement and these problems grew bigger by time. Today after more than 200 years no one hardly, at least no politician, care about the constitution or the bill of rights.

But in the case of non seceding how long would the practical independence from a far away ruler last?

But one must also think about the fact that bill of rights still have some meaning thought it is not practicaly the law of the land anymore.

For people living in the US it may be hard to see this, but I would be grateful if my country had the first amendment. Maybe the first amendment isn’t followed to the letter over there today but none can dare speak against it openly and ordinary people know and cherish that right.

Many places in the world don’t even have that kind of ancient relic that they can turn to. As Ron Paul said I think, liberty is a new thing in humanity as opposed to tyranny and it is a very big and unique luxury to have liberty in your past.